Beauty
by Victoria Bitter
Summary: At the battle of Helm's Deep, Legolas finds beauty in the darkest places.


His knives were things of beauty. Not beautiful as the Dwarves called it, that forced ostentation of craftsmanship, but the beauty of nature perfected or nodded to with deepest respect by artisans who knew that truth was found in the adoration, not the alteration of the lines of nature. Their blades shined like moonlight off still water, etched with delicate, swirling script that spoke a lilting incantation of death. The hilts were wrapped with an intricate weave of tawny leather, holding firm in his palms despite the blood that slicked over his hands.   
  
Their edge was perfect, cutting through armour with no sign of strain, parting mail as lightly as mist. Limbs fell away with screams that seemed benedictions for their ease, and Legolas felt as if his strength surged with each cut, coaxing him to seek out more of the crawling black Orc-flesh to sheathe his beautiful blades.   
  
He was covered in their blood. It dripped from his hands like black rain, spattering into the air with every slashing movement, streaking up his arms, mottling his tunic   
in a morbid darkness, crackling taut on his skin as it dried, clumping his fair hair to lash in heavy ropes against his neck and cling to his face, filling his nostrils with that stench that somehow seemed as intoxicating as mead. He wanted more of it, wanted to feel it flow hot down the hilts of his knives onto his hands. He could not be content until he knew that he had shed every drop of it within his power. Until the last Orc had fallen, or he himself had.   
  
The Elf Prince knew that the Men by his sides watched him with fearful eyes. The Orcs were a simple enemy to their minds, but he, Legolas, was too complicated an ally for their tastes. They wanted to see him as a creature of grace and beauty, but the thought of grace in the motions of death and beauty in the ebony gems of blood on his hands were strange to their minds. He didn't care. They could not understand what he saw when he looked at the Orcs, the fervour that flew in his blades.   
  
He saw himself.   
  
Since he was small, he had heard the stories whispered darkly among his elders. Elves taken in battle, taken by a nameless horror and twisted into something they wouldn't even speak of except in tears and metaphor. Even after he had grown and been told the truth outright, he had half not believed it, but then he had faced them in battle, and he had felt their souls screaming within his own.   
  
All Elves were bound together in a world of spirit, able to draw strength and comfort from one another, to touch one another beyond flesh and speak beyond words. Sauron had severed the Orcs from that, starved their hearts to twist their bodies, but Legolas could still feel them weeping deep within, untouchable and inconsolable, their grief twisted to a despairing loyalty and martial rage. Their pain haunted him, terrified him with its taste of a horror he could all too closely imagine.   
  
If his own soul's tether were cut, could he even care beyond that? Could he care as his body was twisted and broken, burnt and scarred and violated over decades unto centuries unto millennia into something even his nightmares couldn't recognize? Could he care if they split unnatural hordes off his flesh like the cuttings of a wretched and terrible plant? Could he fling himself fast enough into battle to die, and could he strike down those who didn't understand well enough to save him?   
  
He understood. He felt the tears beneath their battle-shrieks, and he heard the gratitude even they could no longer know as his knives cut deep. Their blood was black now, their flesh gray, their movements graceless and grotesque, but there was beauty in the sinuous flow of that blood down the gentle curves of his blades. The Orcs were the shattered horror of a noble people, but they were capable of a last beauty, and he could give them that. He would give them that, and in that gift, he would hide his own fear.   
  
He would give them the beauty of death.   
  
The End 


End file.
